Setup and Configuration

This section is about getting iPeng up and running and changing options.

What do I have to do to get it to work?

In most cases the answer is simple: start it. Period.

If you are using MySqueezebox.com, you will also have to select this under Music Sources. To do so, please swipe right on the NowPlaying screen (where you enter iPeng) to get to the Players and Music Sources and select MySqueezebox.com.

See also in iPeng:

Help->NowPlaying

iPeng will automatically detect SqueezeCenter servers that are on your WiFi network and connect to the first one. And it will pick the first player and select it. And it will start to download your database. Nothing to do for you. So most of what follows now is only if this does NOT work for you.

Note: Whenever you have to change the configuration, you do so in

Settings->iPeng Settings

Note 2: Whenever we write a menu path like this in the iPeng manual we mean that you hit the back button on the initial NowPlaying screen, select the More tab and then the menus as indicated in the path.

Connecting to MySqueezebox.com the first time

Note: Prior to October 2009 MySqueezebox.com was known as SqueezeNetwork.

When you connect to MySqueezebox.com the first time, you will have to pair your device with your MySqueezebox.com account. This is the same process that you have to undergo for each of your players.

iPeng will prompt you for your username and password. Here you have to use the same account that you use to configure your Squeezebox players. iPeng will not store this account information but MySqueezebox.com will remember your iPhone OS device.

Note: If iPeng does NOT prompt you for a username and password the first time you connect to MySqueezebox.com and you don’t see your players or somebody else’s players, please contact support under

coolio [att] penguinlovesmusic [dott] com

After you entered your account information, you now have access to MySqueezebox.com with iPeng.

Adding a Server

There are cases when iPeng can NOT detect your server automatically:

Your server is behind a router or firewall so that iPeng’s server discovery message doesn’t go through. iPeng needs to be able to send and receive a UDP packet on port 3483.

Your WiFi-Access-Point or network doesn’t allow broadcasts.

You want to access a remote server on another network

In these cases, you can add your server address manually.

In iPeng Settings, you’ll find an (initially empty) list of Additional Servers. This is a list of servers that iPeng will always try to connect to after the automatic server discovery. If iPeng is able to reach these servers, it will add them to the list of available servers on the MultiPlayer Control.

You add a server by entering it’s address, either as an URL or an IP-Address.

Examples:

http://myserver.penguinnet.com:9000

http://192.168.1.192:7000

You may omit the “http://”. You may also omit the port number (“:9000”), as long as it’s the default (9000). So in the above cases

myserver.penguinnet.com

would be OK, while

192.168.1.192

would not.

Don’t use authentication credentials in the URL (username and password) since iPeng does not have any encryption and they would not be secured. See Authentication below.

It is safe to add servers that are not always reachable, these will be ignored if you start iPeng in an environment that doesn’t support them.

How do I find my server’s IP address?

Open your server’s web interface. Here you can find the IP address under

Settings->Information->Server IP Address

Notes about connecting to a server

The connection sequence on iPeng startup (that is: the sequence in which iPeng tries to connect to servers) is as follows:

Authentication

If you use authentication (username and password) with Squeezebox Server, iPeng will ask for these credentials when you connect to the server the first time and store these in the iPhone’s (or iPod’s) key ring. When you change these settings in Squeezebox Server, iPeng will ask again. You will have the security level of your iPhone’s key ring for these credentials, iPeng itself does not contain any encryption.

Note: in some cases, iPeng may not load all data completely the first time you enter your credentials. If this is the case (e.g. a list doesn’t show up), simply restart iPeng.

Wake-On-LAN

From version 1.0.3 on iPeng has an experimental Wake-On-LAN (WOL) feature. This means it will send a single WOL packet before the server discovery to wake up your server. To enable this, you will have to enter the MAC-Address of your server in the respective field in Settings. The MAC-Address consists of six hexadecimal numbers (00-ff) separated by colons (e.g. 00:00:00:00:00:01) and is a hardware-identifier of your server’s network adapter.

Notes:

This will only work on a local WiFi network. As a rule of thumb, it will only work when server discovery works, too.

Usually, the server will not come up within the few ms between the WOL packet and the server discovery packet. This is not a problem in most cases, iPeng will continue to send server discovery packets, as long as it is not connected to a server every 16s (it will still do this when it is connected to a server, albeit with a lower frequency). The one case where it is a problem is, when you have other Squeezebox Servers on the same network, in this case iPeng will connect to another server before your sleeping server comes up. You will then have to select your wanted server separately through the server list in the MultiPlayer control.

Caching / Loading the Database

iPeng will load the album, artist, genre tables of your database on startup. It then caches this data and refreshes the cache whenever the number of elements in any of these categories changes. Depending on your database size, this caching can take up to a few minutes. iPeng will store the data on your iPhone upon exit.

From iPeng 1.1 on, a progress bar will be shown in menus that are being cached while the cache data is loading.

Note: There are situations in which iPeng is not able to detect that the data on the server has changed, most notably, if you do a clear and rescan and none of the numbers mentioned above changes. If you notice that the data in iPeng is out of sync with your server’s database, please go to iPeng Settings and press the big, red button called Flush Cache. iPeng will then re-read all cached data from the server. Don’t do this if you don’t need to since it can take some time (see above).

Artwork will be loaded by iPeng after the tables are fully cached. iPeng will read ahead some artwork, but especially with large databases some of it may only be loaded as needed, that is, when it is to be shown first. Artwork will also be stored on your iPhone and thus the notes on caching apply as well. This is true for album artwork as well as for artwork used by Radios.

General Settings

iPeng has a few General Settings that change some behavior of the application. You can get help on these settings by clicking on the i–button behind the setting.

Prevent Sleep Mode

When set to ON, iPeng will keep the iPhone from going to Sleep Mode, that is, it will not autolock and turn on the screen saver.

Preserve Connection

If set to On, iPeng will not diconnect from the server when it goes into sleep mode (screen saver mode) but will try to keep the connection open. This will speed up reactivity when the screen saver is being disabled.

Note: Since iPeng will keep communicating with the server, your iPhone/iPod will consume more power and drain the battery if you leave it running for a long time.

Big Cover Art

If set to ON, iPeng will stretch the cover art over the whole background of the screen on NowPlaying. By default, iPeng will use smaller Cover Art (320×320 points) which will fit the whole cover on the screen.

Don’t Group Controls

When set to ON, the main volume and power controls and the information displayed on playback status on the NowPlaying screen will only act on and refer to the current player, even when this player is a member of a synchronization group. Per default, iPeng’s main controls will act on the whole group.

NowPlaying on Play

When set to ON, iPeng will automatically switch to the NowPlaying screen when selecting PLAY on an item. This has no effect when adding tracks to the playlist.

Play Single Tracks

Per default, iPeng will behave like iPod and always try to play all tracks in an album or playlist when selecting PLAY (not ADD or ADD NEXT).

However, Squeezebox Server has a per-player setting (Play Other Tracks In Album) to define this behavior for the IR remote control. If you prefer to use Squeezebox Server’s setting, set this option to ON.

Sort Albums by Name

Per default, lower level Albums lists under an Artist (and only those) will be sorted by (Year, Name) in iPeng 1.1 or newer. If this option is set to On, they will be sorted by Name.

Inhibit Pushout

If set to ON, iPeng will never skip a level in the browse hierarchy. Per default, iPeng will push out of album and artist levels that only contain a single element by automatically opening that element.